Page 12 7KH ,VODPLF %XOOHWLQ A forty-two-year-old Latino, Raphael, is aLosAngeles-basedcomicand lecturer. HewasborninTexaswhereheattended his first Jehovah’s Witness meeting at age six. He gave his first Bible sermon at eight, tended his own congregation at twenty, and was headed for a position of leadership among the 904,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States. Buthe tradedhisBible for aQur’anafter having braved a visit to a local mosque. OnNovember1,1991,heembracedIslam, bringing to theMuslimcommunity theorganizational and speaking skills he developed among Jehovah’sWitnesses. He speaks with the urgency of a new convert, but one who can make immigrant Muslims laugh at themselves. He told his story mimicking a cast of characters. I remember vividly being in a discussionwherewewere all sitting inmy parents’ living room and there were some other Jehovah’s Witnesses there. Theywere talking about: “It’s Armageddon! The time of the end! And Christ is coming! And you know the hailstones are going to be out here as big as cars! God is going to use all kinds of things to destroy this wicked system and remove the governments! And the Bible talks about the earth opening up! It’s going to swallow whole city blocks!” I’m scared to death! And then my mother turned around: “See what’s going to happen to you if you don’t get baptized, and if you don’t do God’s will? The earth is going to swallow you up, or one of these huge hailstones is going to hit you on the head [klonk], knock you out, and you will not exist ever again. I’ll have to make another child.” I wasn’t going to take a chance of being hit by one of those big hailstones. So I got baptized. And of course Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in the sprinkling of the water. They submerge you completely, hold you there for a second, and then bring you back up.I did that at the age of thirteen, September 7, 1963, in Pasadena, California, at the Rose Bowl. It was a big international assembly. We had 100,000 people. We drove all the way from Lubbock, Texas. Eventually I started giving bigger talks - ten minutes in front of the congregation. And a circuit servant recommended me to give the hour lectures that are done on Sunday when they invite the general public. They usually reserved those [sermons] for the elders of the congregation. [In an authoritarian voice:] “Sure he’s young. But he can handle it. He’s a good Christian boy. He has no vices, and he’s obedient to his parents and seems to have pretty good Bible knowledge.” So at the age of sixteen I started giving hour lectures in front of whole congregations. I was assigned first to a group in Sweetwater, Texas, and then, eventually, inBrownfield, Texas, I gotmy first congregation. At age twenty, I hadbecomewhat they call a pioneerminister. Jehovah’sWitnesses have a very sophisticated training program, and they also have kind of a quota system. You have to devote ten to twelve hours a month to door-to-door preaching. It’s like sales management. IBM has nothing on these guys. So when I became a pioneer minister, I devoted most of my full time to doing the door-to-doorministry. I had to do like 100 hours amonth, and I had to have seven Bible studies. I started lecturing other congregations. I began to get a lot of responsibility, and I was accepted at a school in Brooklyn, New York , a very elite school that Jehovah’s Witnesses have for the creme de la creme, the top one percent. But I didn’t go. A few things no longer made sense tome. For example, the quota system. It seemed like every time I wanted to turn a corner and get into another positionof responsibility, Ihadtodothesesecularmaterial things toprovemy godliness. It’s like if youmeet your quotas thismonth, God loves you. If you don’tmeet yourquotasnextmonth,Goddoesn’t loveyou.Thatdidn’tmake very much sense. One month God loves me and one month He doesn’t? The other thing I started noticing is tunnel vision. Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only ones who are going to be saved in God’s new order, nobody else, because all of them are practicing false religions. Well, I thought, Mother Teresa’s a Catholic. That’s our dire enemy. So I said, Wait a minute, Mother Teresa has spent her entire life doing things that Jesus said: take care of the poor, the sick, the orphans. But she’s not going to have God’s favor because she’s a Catholic? We criticized the Catholic Church because they had a man, a priest, to whom they had to confess. And we’d say, “You shouldn’t have to go to a man to confess your sins! Your sin is against God!” And yet we went to a Body of Elders. You confessed your sins to them, and they put you on hold, and said [Elder as telephone operator:] “Hold on just aminute...What do you think, Lord? No?...Okay, I’m sorry, we tried our best but you’re not repentant enough. Your sin is too big, so you either lose your fellowship in the church or you’re going to be on probation.” If the sin is against God, shouldn’t I directly go toGod and beg for mercy? Probably thenail that hit the coffinwas that I noticed that they started reading their Bible less. Jehovah’sWitnesses have books for everything that are put out by theWatchtower Bible andTract Society. Theonlypeopleon the entire planet who know how to interpret Bible Scripture correctly are that group of men, that committee in Brooklyn, who tell Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide how to dress, how to talk, what to say, what not to say, how to apply Scripture and what the future is going to be like. God told them, so they can tell us. I appreciated the books. But if the Bible is the book of knowledge and if it’sGod’s instructions,well, shouldn’twe get our answers out of the Bible? Paul himself said find out for yourself what is a true and acceptable word of God. Don’t let men tickle your ears. I started saying, “Don’t worry so much about what the Watchtower says - read the Bible for yourself.” Ears started to prick up. [Old Southerner’s drawl:] “I think we got us an apostate here, Judge. Yup. I think this old boy’s one taco short of something.” Evenmy father said, “You better watch it, youngman, that’s the demons talking right there. That’s the demons trying to get in and cause division.” I said, “Dad, it’snot thedemons. Peopledon’t needtoreadsomuchof these otherpublications. Theycan findtheir answerswithprayer and in theBible.” Spiritually I no longer felt at ease. So in1979, knowing that I couldnotmake headway, I left, disgruntled and with a bad taste inmy mouth, because all my life I had put my soul, my heart, my mind into the church. That was the problem. I didn’t put it in God. I put it in a man-made organization. I can’t go to other religions. As a Jehovah’s Witness, I had been trained, through the Scriptures, to show that they are all wrong. That idolatry is bad. Trinity doesn’t exist. I’m like a man without a religion. I was not a man without a God. But where could I go? In 1985, I decided to come to Los Angeles and get on the Johnny Carson show and make my mark as a great comedian and actor. I have always felt like I was born for something. I didn’t know whether it was going to be finding the cure to cancer or becoming an actor. I kept praying and it got frustrating after a while. So I just went to the Catholic church close to my house, and I tried it. I remember on Ash Wednesday I had that ash cross onmy forehead. I was trying anything I could. I went for about two or three months, and just couldn’t do it anymore, man. It was: Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Okay, stick your tongue out. You got a lot of exercise. I think I lost about five pounds. But that’s about it. So now I’mmore lost than ever. But it never passed through my mind that there is not a Creator. I haveHis phone number, but the line’s always busy. I’m doing my little movie shots. A film called Deadly Intent. A telephone commercial in Chicago. An Exxon commercial. A couple of bank commercials. In the meantime I’m doing construction work on the side. We’re working on this mall. It’s the holiday season, and they put these extra booths in the hallways. There was a gal at one, and we had to pass right in front of her. I’d say, “Good morning, how are you?” If she said anything, it was “Hi.” And that was it. Finally, I said, “Miss, you never say anything. I just wanted to apologize if there was something I said wrong.” She said, “No, you see, I’m a Muslim.” “You’re what?” “I’maMuslim,andMuslimwomen,wedon’t talktomenunlesswehavesomeHOW I EMBRACED ISLAM
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